Evolution and modulation of Ag filament dynamics within memristive devices based on necklace-like Ag@TiO2 nanowire networks

Random nanowire networks (NWNs) are regarded as promising memristive materials for applications in information storage, selectors, and neuromorphic computing. The further insight to understand their resistive switching properties and conduction mechanisms is crucial to realize the full potential of random NWNs. Here, a novel planar memristive device based on necklace-like structure Ag@TiO2 NWN is reported, in which a strategy only using water to tailor the TiO2 shell on Ag core for necklace-like core-shell structure is developed to achieve uniform topology connectivity. With analyzing the influence of compliance current on resistive switching characteristics and further tracing evolution trends of resistance state during the repetitive switching cycles, two distinctive evolution trends of low resistance state failure and high resistance state failure are revealed, which bear resemblance to memory loss and consolidation in biological systems. The underlying conduction mechanisms are related to the modulation of the Ag accumulation dynamics inside the filaments at cross-point junctions within conductive paths of NWNs. An optimizing principle is then proposed to design reproducible and reliable threshold switching devices by tuning the NWN density and electrical stimulation. The optimized threshold switching devices have a high ON/OFF ratio of ~107 with threshold voltage as low as 0.35 V. This work will provide insights into engineering random NWNs for diverse functions by modulating external excitation and optimizing NWN parameters to satisfy specific applications, transforming from neuromorphic systems to threshold switching devices as selectors.

The Colonial Origins of Theorizing Piracy’s Relation to Failed States

Contemporary views of piracy often associate it with state failure. However, this view may be traced to nineteenth-century debates about Southeast Asia, and in particular, the writings of Sir Stamford Raffles for whom it became a pretext for intervention. Prior to this, European observers and officials tended either to naturalize piracy as a part of Southeast Asian life, or to label foes as pirates. Both nineteenth-century colonial debates and earlier stereotypes disconnected from maritime settings do not provide reliable evidence of piracy. Instead, they offer evidence of colonial ideology and statecraft. This essay historicizes piracy’s association with failed states and offers another way to theorize piracy without adopting either statist or relativist points of view.

State failure, genocide and politicide reconsidered

State failure is highly threatening to incumbent elites, providing them motive to engage in genocide or politicide. The destruction of formal institutions may also remove political barriers to employing such atrocities. Thus, previous scholars expect state failure to increase the likelihood of genocide and politicide. However, such logic overlooks that these atrocities are government policy, which require planning and implementation. Since government institutions collapse during state failure, regime elites will possess little physical ability to commit widespread and systematic killing of their enemies. Therefore, I expect state failure to be associated with a lower likelihood of genocide and politicide. Using bivariate probit regression to handle the endogeneity between state failure and these atrocities, I find strong support for my argument in all country-years since 1946.

Pandemic State Failure, Hydrocarbon Control, and Indigenous Territorial Counteraction in the Peruvian Amazon

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Peruvian government failed to protect its sparsely populated Amazon region. While infections were still rising, resource extraction was quickly approved to continue operations as a declared essential service that permitted an influx of workers into vulnerable indigenous territories despite weak or almost absent local healthcare. This article analyzes territorial counteraction as an indigenous response to pandemic national state failure, highlighted in a case of particularly conflictive stakes of resource control: Peru’s largest liquid natural gas extraction site Camisea in the Upper Amazon, home to several indigenous groups in the Lower Urubamba who engaged in collective action to create their own district. Frustration with the state’s handling of the crisis prompted indigenous counteraction to take COVID-19 measures and territorial control into their own hands. By blocking boat traffic on their main river, they effectively cut off their remote and roadless Amazon district off from the outside world. Local indigenous control had already been on the rise after the region had successfully fought for its own formal subnational administrative jurisdiction in 2016, named Megantoni district. The pandemic then created a moment of full indigenous territorial control that openly declared itself as a response and replacement of a failed national state. Drawing on political ecology, we analyze this as an interesting catalyst moment that elevated long-standing critiques of inequalities, and state neglect into new negotiations of territory and power between the state and indigenous self-determination, with potentially far-reaching implications on state-indigenous power dynamics and territorial control, beyond the pandemic.

State Failure and Successful Leadership in Medieval India

State failure has been an enduring topic in the history of political thought. This article will revisit modern debates on the characteristics of state failure and the factors conducive to successful leadership by focusing on political ideas that evolved in fourteenth-century India. I will discuss two works with the same title, i.e., Tārīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī ( The History of Fīrūz Shāh) of the distinguished historians of the Delhi Sultanate period Ziyā’ al-Dīn Baranī (ca. 1285–1357) and Shams Sirāj ‘Afīf (d. 1399) about Sultans Muḥammad b. Tughluq and (his successor) Fīrūz Shāh as instantiations of state failure and good governance, respectively. The deployment of the concept of state failure has often been construed as an effort to impose a political straitjacket; the examination of authors like Baranī and ‘Afīf demonstrates the value of reflecting on lessons from history and exploring how societies in the past evolved their own patterns of thinking about effective or failed leadership.